Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Love under the microscope

Did your Valentine forget to bring you a heart-shaped box of chocolates today? Don’t despair! Here's an assortment of sweet little (low-calorie) scientific insights into the inner workings of the heart.

A recent study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences should comfort men who think that they have to climb the corporate ladder to reach their Juliet: Researchers found that women actually prefer attractive men with medium-paying jobs over attractive men who head companies.

Women might think that high-status men are more likely to cheat on them, according to the authors of the study. To capture this point, they titled their paper: “Too good to be ‘true’? The handicap of high socio-economic status in attractive males”. One attractive, cigar-smoking, former US president comes to mind…

And for those people in search of a picture-perfect sweetheart – look no further than Darwin Dating. According to the site, “Darwin Dating was created exclusively for beautiful, desirable people. Our strict rules and natural selection process ensures all our members have winning looks.” The creators of the dating scheme have banned, for example, sweat patches, nerdy glasses and pocket protectors. The site is of course a joke, and even more so given the fact that no one ever looks as good in their internet photo as in real life.

Women seem more eager than men, by the way, to hit the books in the name of love. A recent survey conducted by the language software company Rosetta Stone found that while 97% of women would learn a new language to better communicate with a partner, only 71% of men would do the same. But, oddly, the latest ad from Rosetta Stone describes the opposite scenario: “He was a hardworking farm boy. She was an Italian supermodel. He knew he would have just one chance to impress her.”

Your sweetheart might be tongue-tied when it comes to proclaiming his or her love for you. But male frogs are more than eager to vocalize their yearning for potential mates. In one recent experiment published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, male frogs that received an injection of hormones known as gonadotropins increased the frequency of their mating calls. One video from the experiment shows two male frogs that received this hormone facing off in a “vocal duel” (.mov file) for the love of an off-screen female frog. (Video credit: Darcy Kelly/Candance Barnard)

Lastly, one fish species may shed light on what they mean by “love at first sight”. An experiment – published in Biology Letters – on the green swordtail fish shows for the first time how the sight of physical ornamentation on a potential mate can trigger sexual maturation. Female fish that were shown a male with very a large tail-fin ornament reached sexual maturity up to four months sooner than their female counterparts that missed out on this sight.

If you've come across any juicy morsels on the science of love, let us know in the comments below.

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